Rattled for tyrsibs
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spn_summergenTitle: Rattled
Recipient:tyrsibs
Rating: PG
Word Count: ~3157
Warnings: Mild show level language, a bit of light H/C and implied OC death. Story is set between 8.16 Remember the Titans and 8.17 Goodbye Stranger, consider that your spoiler warning.
Author’s Note: Apologies as I think this might have ended up kind of astray from the original prompt(s). Additional apologies for any misused language or lore or science, this is almost all from my brain with a tiny bit of Wikipedia. Thank you so much tyrsibs, your prompts were so good!
Summary:Sam and Dean thought the bunker had been unoccupied when they moved in.
The Winchesters had been living in the bunker for months before they realized. In their defence, there had been all sorts of strange hums and clicks to get used to, so in general odd sounds made no real impression. There were no cold spots or sulphur smells or other things they had been trained to notice. If Dean sometimes got an itch between his shoulder blades, or Sam sometimes stared into a dark room for a moment too long before switching on the lights, it went unmentioned and was quickly forgotten.
It wasn’t until after they came back from their encounter with ancient Greek gods in Montana that it happened. Sam had been slumped at the table, hunched over a cup of coffee he was more interested in for warmth than in drinking; Dean had been hovering nearby pretending to enjoy computer porn while mostly watching his brother like a hawk over the edge of the screen. Sam bolted upright so suddenly alert and in hunter mode that it made Dean startle and slam the notebook shut. The expected admonishment from his geeky brother about possibly damaging the computer didn’t come; Sam was too occupied intently scanning the room and Dean felt the hair on the back of his neck prickling.
“Dude, what the-?”
“Shhhh!” Sam hissed. Dean drew his gun and slowly stood, scrutinizing the room but seeing nothing amiss. turned around in his chair, his head swivelling and after a few tense moments he whispered, “You hear that?”
Dean frowned; he wasn’t hearing anything but their combined breathing and the usual white noise they’d become accustomed to in the bunker. Tense silence reigned for a few more seconds before Dean couldn’t stand it anymore.
“What, Sam?
“I don’t know. It’s like…hissing. I think there might be words, I just can’t make them out. I don’t understand.” After a moment Dean realized that last part wasn’t meant for him. He strained his ears but couldn’t hear anything like the sound Sam was describing. Worried that his brother might be spiking a fever he tried to reach across to lay his hand on Sam’s forehead but it was batted away in annoyance.
“Quit it Dean!”
“Sam, I’m not hearing it,” Dean stated, meeting his brother’s eyes with a tinge of apology, “are you sure it maybe isn’t a, you know, ‘Trials’ thing?” Sam opened his mouth to protest, then paused, wiping his hand against his mouth as his eyes showed some doubt. This time when Dean reached for this forehead he didn’t protest. “Well, you’re cooking but not enough to fry your melon,” Dean mused about Sam’s low-grade fever. “Let’s get some Tylenol in you anyway, Sammy, alright?”
“Fine,” the younger Winchester groused, “But something’s here, Dean.”
“You think...could it be Cas?” Dean asked, keeping his expression neutral. He knew it was unlikely but his heart flared with hope that maybe the angel had heard and was responding to his prayer, at least until Sam shook his head.
“No, this is…I don’t know how to explain it, Dean. It’s different.”
“Okay, Sammy,” Dean accepted as he masked his disappointment. “You let me know when you figure it out and if something needs killing we’ll gank it.”
The loud rattling sound near Dean’s feet made him jump away from the table. Sam stood more slowly to step back in the same direction, glancing at Dean with a knowing look.
“Guessing you heard that,” Sam offered snarkily and Dean rolled his eyes, gun and eyes scanning the area near the table as he moved himself instinctively between his brother and the threat.
“Yeah, well, no one likes a smart ass.” Dean cleared his throat, looking back at Sam’s scrunched up face. “You hearing...anything?”
“Same as before, a bit…more. I can…almost...ahh!” Sam’s hands both went to his head and Dean turned to grab him, holding his brother up as his knees collapsed.
“Dammit!” Dean cursed, anger as always fuelled by fear for his brother and that crushing sense of powerlessness he had lived with since Sam took the burden that should have been his. The rattling sounded again and he yelled at it, “Keep hurting my brother and we’ll see who makes scary noises!” A louder rattle sounded closer and Dean dragged his brother back. “Yeah, yeah, needs more cowbell!”
“Stop,” Sam whispered as Dean half-carried him to a chair plopped him down into it. For a moment Dean just looked at him helplessly, gesturing for him to stay before striding towards the weapons they had mounted on the wall.
“I got this.” Dean hadn’t felt any cold spots but at this moment ghost was his best guess as to who or what was hurting his brother, so he grabbed the shotgun they always kept loaded with salt and grabbed a canister of it from his duffel for good measure. He hurried back to his brother and began pouring a ring around his chair before he heard Sam call his name and felt his hand on his arm.
“No, Dean, stop. It’s okay. I’m okay, it’s not hurting me and it’s not a ghost. Well, not exactly.”
“What not exactly is it then, Sam?” ‘And how do I kill it?’ went unspoken, but Sam’s bitchface told him that he’d picked up on it anyway. Another long sound of warning from their intruder told him that it had as well.
“I think it’s a...well, it’s kind of…it’s like the essence of...” Sam stammered until Dean’s patience ran out.
“Spit it out, Sam!”
“Rattlesnake,” Sam finally gritted out, rubbing his temples. “It’s a rattlesnake spirit. Kind of.”
“Ghost snake?” Dean asked incredulously. “How does that even happen?”
“Not a ghost,” Sam protested weakly, ignored by his brother as he continued to fume.
“And you, all of a sudden, are what, some kind of parselmouth?” Dean winced internally at his inadvertent Harry Potter reference. Sam was eyeing him surprised fondness, a teasing glint in his eye. “Shut up, Sammy,” he growled before the younger Winchester could gloat. “My point it, if it’s talking how come I’m only hearing the tambourine action?”
“It’s not...I’m not hearing it exactly, it’s more like it’s in my head,” Sam confessed, wincing at how that sounded as soon as the words left his mouth.
“Oh, yeah, that’s much better,” Dean deadpanned.
“I mean, it can’t talk, it’s a snake. I thought I was hearing it before but I think it was just trying to find a way to...to commune with us?”
“Commune? Really? Well, kumbaya then Sam, that’s fantastic,” Dean drawled, hands brushing through his hair while he tried not to scream in frustration. “And it almost took you down because...”
“Dean, I think I know what happened!” Sam excitedly ignored his brother, hopping up and leaving the room so suddenly that the older Winchester was left blinking at a chair.
“Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?” Dean muttered before calling out after his brother. “Sam? Swear to God if you’re doing something weird because the ghost snake told you to, I’m gonna…you’re back and you brought…research.” Sam triumphantly dropped a pile of files and weathered notebooks on the table and began sorting and skimming through them.
“I was looking through some of the Men of Letters files a while back and I remember these notes about one of them, a Winthrop Blake.”
“Typically douchey name,” Dean interjected.
“Uh huh, Slytherin for sure, right?” Sam snickered innocently as he picked up another notebook. After grinning up at Dean’s murderous expression he went on, “Blake apparently was a bit of an outcast among the other Men of Letters because he thought they should work more directly with hunters, like…here,” he said pointing to a page of neat handwriting. “‘Blake’s mad to bring hunters to this bastion of knowledge, and madder still to think that they would be willing subjects to his theoretical magicks. We are agreed, he must be stopped.’”
“Sam, you know I love the history lessons, but how ‘bout we cut to the part where we have a GHOST SNAKE IN THE BUNKER?”
“I’m getting there, Dean, so when I read that I looked for more on Blake’s experiments with hunters, I thought maybe he found something useful. I dug around the records and I found some of his notes and spells,” Sam explained, waving another notebook that looked like gibberish to Dean. “Blake was trying to enhance hunters’ abilities by melding them with the spirits of animals that were also great predators, like a grizzly bear, a komodo dragon, but his best results came with-”
“Oh, I’ll take ‘Rattlesnake’ for one hundred.”
“Yes! He called it pecu’una, but it’s not a ghost, it’s not even a particular snake. It’s like the essence of a snake that he created to enhance a hunter.”
“And so Blake dials up this pecorino and it moves in permanently? That couldn’t have been the plan.”
“Pecu’una. And no, something obviously went wrong, but Blake left no notes after his last entry where he says he’s going to summon it. Either the spell went wrong or the Men of Letters made good on their threats.”
“What does your new friend Pecker say?”
“We are not calling it that,” Sam said flatly. “And it doesn’t talk, remember? What it showed me honestly isn’t super clear, I mean the pecu’una didn’t even exist before Blake did his spell so its earliest memories are chaotic. It doesn’t seem to know what happened to Blake or the hunter. But then I think the Men of Letters tried a spell to get rid of it. When it didn’t work, but it hid itself from them so they would think it did.”
“Like it hid from us until now.”
“Right.”
“So, it just stuck around watching them? For how long?”
“I’m not sure. And then, well, Abaddon happened and it was just…stuck here.”
“It never tried to leave the bunker?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Okay. Joy. Now how do we unstick it? And more importantly, what’s it doing to you?”
“I’m fine,” Sam protested quickly, not meeting his brother’s eyes. When he finally looked up and saw Dean’s sceptical look he sighed, rubbing his hands over his face. “Okay. I’m not fine, but it’s not because of anything it did and this isn’t making anything worse. I promise.” This time he met his brother’s eyes with as much sincerity as he could manage and it was Dean that finally sighed, his signalled acceptance still tinged with doubt. Accepting that was as good as he could expect, Sam continued on, “From what I could tell from Blake’s notes, the melding wasn’t meant to be permanent. It was just meant to assist a hunter through one hunt, and then it would basically dissipate. You’d have to perform the ritual again to duplicate the effect.”
“Somehow I don’t think he got the recipe right.”
“The hunters were only supposed to have enhanced senses, abilities. And the pecu’una wasn’t supposed to exist after that as a separate entity. But now it does. It’s showing me what it’s seen, Dean, and I can sense its emotions. It was just…a surprise, overwhelming at first. But it’s okay now.” Sam kept to himself his thoughts about what might have made it possible for the spirit to share its knowledge with him this way. Both possibilities – a side-effect from the Trials or his own past psychic abilities which might just be dormant – were touchy subjects with Dean and there were more than enough of those between them these days.
“Can you complete the ritual from Blake’s notes?” Dean asked somewhat reluctantly. He really had no desire to be magically joined to a snake, but he had less desire to have that happen to his brother.
“I wouldn’t want to try, given that we already know it didn’t work right. But I think there’s maybe another way,” Sam began, and then proceeded to lay out his plan as quickly as possible, not wanting to allow Dean a chance to object before he had made his case. When he was finished a long pause followed before Dean finally spoke.
“So you don’t think it’s trapped in the bunker?” Dean asked slowly. Sam shrugged.
“If I’m right, we’ll find out.”
“And it’s...okay with this? I mean, if you’re right, it means it will...” Dean trailed off, drawing his forefinger across his throat with a hiss.
“Yeah, but it never wanted this. It’s been alone here, all this time until we came. It’s what I feel most from it, it just…wants to fulfil its purpose.”
“Okay, fine I’ll make you a deal, Mr. Maracas. Sleep and Tylenol for Sam – seriously, dude, you look like crap – and a couple of good meals which Sam will eat, then I’ll look for a hunt. Then provided Baby’s good with the ride-along, you come with and get your snake on, and if Sam’s right that will do the trick.” He looked at Sam expectantly until his brother nodded.
“I’m pretty sure it will.” Sam looked bothered for the first time, which given everything that had been happening up to and including ‘communing’ with their new snake friend made Dean worry.
“Sammy?”
Sam shook his head sourly before responding.
“It agrees and it’s grateful. And I think it likes you.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The next few days were surprisingly normal, at least by Winchester standards. Sam rolled his eyes often but accepted the extra mother-henning from his brother with reasonably good graces. While he still looked pale, he was more animated than Dean had seen him since the Trials had begun. Dean suspected that he had their guest to thank for that, as he watched Sam engaging readily in one sided conversations while leafing through Men of Letters files and journals. There had apparently been some amount of time between whatever had happened to Winthrop Blake and the appearance of Abaddon, and Sam was soaking up the images provided by the spirit to fill in the gaps of what had been documented. What good any of it would do was a mystery to Dean, but it made his brother happy and that was certainly enough.
For his own part, Dean had found the spirit unexpected playful, trying to catch him off-guard by rattling at unexpected times. After startling once (maybe twice, not that he’d ever admit it) Dean had caught on to the game, and had found he’d enjoyed the cat and mouse nature of the game, even turning the tables on the spirit once or twice by pre-emptively calling out its presence. He thought they’d come to a kind of mutual respect, hunter to hunter.
Sam kept his mouth shut when a week had passed before Dean even cracked open the laptop. He kept his own council when he noticed that Dean was no longer using a series of nicknames but had settled on Peck, which the spirit found pleasing. Sam remained silent as Dean passed over a couple of clear potential hunts. Sam said nothing when Dean’s taunts that he ‘won again’ echoed through the bunker.
Sam wistfully thought of various birds and hamsters he’d been forced to abandon or leave behind growing up because hunting left no room for pets (how he’d cried over Bones) and how Dean had seemed to stoically accept that reality while Sam had cried and fumed at the unfairness of it all. It had never occurred to his younger self that Dean might have accepted it but it didn’t mean that he’d wanted it.
Another week passed with Sam learning more about the Men of Letters from Peck’s viewpoint, with Dean playful and relaxed as he hadn’t really been since getting back from Purgatory. One evening Sam casually dropped the suggestion that maybe Peck’s hunt could wait until after he’d finished the Trials. By the thin press of Dean’s lips and the restlessness he felt from the spirit it had been the wrong thing to say. The next morning Dean had located the perfect hunt and shown it to Sam. Sam looked away from his brother’s carefully blank expression, wishing more than anything he had just kept silent for a while longer.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The vamp nest was in a boarded-up diner off Route 66 in New Mexico, a weathered wooden structure which looked like a good gust of wind might make it collapse. They pulled into the parking lot as the sun was beginning to set over the desert. For a while they just sat watching the sky turn an otherworldly combination of reds and purples and Sam pretended that devastating beauty was the reason for the lump in his throat. Dean had insisted that taking out this nest at dusk would make it a better hunt, more challenging for them, refusing to admit that he knew rattlers preferred to hunt at night. For Sam evidence that Dean also cared about Peck made this better and worse. Worse, because it would be one more loss that among their many. But better, because even though he suspected they would never speak of it, Peck would be another thing that they and they alone shared, something no one else would have even understood. Another bit of family history that Sam could cling to for strength as the Trials seemed to want to drain him of it.
“Okay, we all ready for this?” Dean looked at his brother before gazing up at the roof the way he had gotten in the habit of when talking to their guest. “Peck, you good?” An enthusiastic rattle echoed through the Impala. “Okay, well, I guess this is it then. You know the rules, Peck. Go for the ankles, it’ll make it easier for us to take the heads. And remember, watch out for Sammy.”
“Hey!” Sam protest was drowned out by another loud rattle.
“That sound like a yes to you?”
“It sounded like you’re a jerk,” Sam grumbled. Dean gave him a look of feigned innocence and they sat in the car a moment longer, watching the sky continue to fade as the sun dropped behind the desert landscape. Sounds of shouts and screams erupted from the diner and the brothers couldn’t help but smile for a moment before exiting the car together and moving to the trunk. As they pulled out their machetes, Dean gave his brother a long look. It might be his own desperate need to have it be true but he thought Sam looked better, stronger than he had a few weeks ago. Maybe strong enough now to make it out of the Trials okay. He’d prayed for Cas and he’d gotten Peck, but Dean wasn’t one to argue with results.
“Peck sounds like he’s having fun, time for us to join the party,” he offered. Sam nodded quietly and Dean couldn’t help but add, “You good, Sam?”
“Yeah,” Sam said firmly, slamming the trunk of the Impala shut with a determined look. “We’ve got work to do.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
THE END
Recipient:
tyrsibsRating: PG
Word Count: ~3157
Warnings: Mild show level language, a bit of light H/C and implied OC death. Story is set between 8.16 Remember the Titans and 8.17 Goodbye Stranger, consider that your spoiler warning.
Author’s Note: Apologies as I think this might have ended up kind of astray from the original prompt(s). Additional apologies for any misused language or lore or science, this is almost all from my brain with a tiny bit of Wikipedia. Thank you so much tyrsibs, your prompts were so good!
Summary:Sam and Dean thought the bunker had been unoccupied when they moved in.
The Winchesters had been living in the bunker for months before they realized. In their defence, there had been all sorts of strange hums and clicks to get used to, so in general odd sounds made no real impression. There were no cold spots or sulphur smells or other things they had been trained to notice. If Dean sometimes got an itch between his shoulder blades, or Sam sometimes stared into a dark room for a moment too long before switching on the lights, it went unmentioned and was quickly forgotten.
It wasn’t until after they came back from their encounter with ancient Greek gods in Montana that it happened. Sam had been slumped at the table, hunched over a cup of coffee he was more interested in for warmth than in drinking; Dean had been hovering nearby pretending to enjoy computer porn while mostly watching his brother like a hawk over the edge of the screen. Sam bolted upright so suddenly alert and in hunter mode that it made Dean startle and slam the notebook shut. The expected admonishment from his geeky brother about possibly damaging the computer didn’t come; Sam was too occupied intently scanning the room and Dean felt the hair on the back of his neck prickling.
“Dude, what the-?”
“Shhhh!” Sam hissed. Dean drew his gun and slowly stood, scrutinizing the room but seeing nothing amiss. turned around in his chair, his head swivelling and after a few tense moments he whispered, “You hear that?”
Dean frowned; he wasn’t hearing anything but their combined breathing and the usual white noise they’d become accustomed to in the bunker. Tense silence reigned for a few more seconds before Dean couldn’t stand it anymore.
“What, Sam?
“I don’t know. It’s like…hissing. I think there might be words, I just can’t make them out. I don’t understand.” After a moment Dean realized that last part wasn’t meant for him. He strained his ears but couldn’t hear anything like the sound Sam was describing. Worried that his brother might be spiking a fever he tried to reach across to lay his hand on Sam’s forehead but it was batted away in annoyance.
“Quit it Dean!”
“Sam, I’m not hearing it,” Dean stated, meeting his brother’s eyes with a tinge of apology, “are you sure it maybe isn’t a, you know, ‘Trials’ thing?” Sam opened his mouth to protest, then paused, wiping his hand against his mouth as his eyes showed some doubt. This time when Dean reached for this forehead he didn’t protest. “Well, you’re cooking but not enough to fry your melon,” Dean mused about Sam’s low-grade fever. “Let’s get some Tylenol in you anyway, Sammy, alright?”
“Fine,” the younger Winchester groused, “But something’s here, Dean.”
“You think...could it be Cas?” Dean asked, keeping his expression neutral. He knew it was unlikely but his heart flared with hope that maybe the angel had heard and was responding to his prayer, at least until Sam shook his head.
“No, this is…I don’t know how to explain it, Dean. It’s different.”
“Okay, Sammy,” Dean accepted as he masked his disappointment. “You let me know when you figure it out and if something needs killing we’ll gank it.”
The loud rattling sound near Dean’s feet made him jump away from the table. Sam stood more slowly to step back in the same direction, glancing at Dean with a knowing look.
“Guessing you heard that,” Sam offered snarkily and Dean rolled his eyes, gun and eyes scanning the area near the table as he moved himself instinctively between his brother and the threat.
“Yeah, well, no one likes a smart ass.” Dean cleared his throat, looking back at Sam’s scrunched up face. “You hearing...anything?”
“Same as before, a bit…more. I can…almost...ahh!” Sam’s hands both went to his head and Dean turned to grab him, holding his brother up as his knees collapsed.
“Dammit!” Dean cursed, anger as always fuelled by fear for his brother and that crushing sense of powerlessness he had lived with since Sam took the burden that should have been his. The rattling sounded again and he yelled at it, “Keep hurting my brother and we’ll see who makes scary noises!” A louder rattle sounded closer and Dean dragged his brother back. “Yeah, yeah, needs more cowbell!”
“Stop,” Sam whispered as Dean half-carried him to a chair plopped him down into it. For a moment Dean just looked at him helplessly, gesturing for him to stay before striding towards the weapons they had mounted on the wall.
“I got this.” Dean hadn’t felt any cold spots but at this moment ghost was his best guess as to who or what was hurting his brother, so he grabbed the shotgun they always kept loaded with salt and grabbed a canister of it from his duffel for good measure. He hurried back to his brother and began pouring a ring around his chair before he heard Sam call his name and felt his hand on his arm.
“No, Dean, stop. It’s okay. I’m okay, it’s not hurting me and it’s not a ghost. Well, not exactly.”
“What not exactly is it then, Sam?” ‘And how do I kill it?’ went unspoken, but Sam’s bitchface told him that he’d picked up on it anyway. Another long sound of warning from their intruder told him that it had as well.
“I think it’s a...well, it’s kind of…it’s like the essence of...” Sam stammered until Dean’s patience ran out.
“Spit it out, Sam!”
“Rattlesnake,” Sam finally gritted out, rubbing his temples. “It’s a rattlesnake spirit. Kind of.”
“Ghost snake?” Dean asked incredulously. “How does that even happen?”
“Not a ghost,” Sam protested weakly, ignored by his brother as he continued to fume.
“And you, all of a sudden, are what, some kind of parselmouth?” Dean winced internally at his inadvertent Harry Potter reference. Sam was eyeing him surprised fondness, a teasing glint in his eye. “Shut up, Sammy,” he growled before the younger Winchester could gloat. “My point it, if it’s talking how come I’m only hearing the tambourine action?”
“It’s not...I’m not hearing it exactly, it’s more like it’s in my head,” Sam confessed, wincing at how that sounded as soon as the words left his mouth.
“Oh, yeah, that’s much better,” Dean deadpanned.
“I mean, it can’t talk, it’s a snake. I thought I was hearing it before but I think it was just trying to find a way to...to commune with us?”
“Commune? Really? Well, kumbaya then Sam, that’s fantastic,” Dean drawled, hands brushing through his hair while he tried not to scream in frustration. “And it almost took you down because...”
“Dean, I think I know what happened!” Sam excitedly ignored his brother, hopping up and leaving the room so suddenly that the older Winchester was left blinking at a chair.
“Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?” Dean muttered before calling out after his brother. “Sam? Swear to God if you’re doing something weird because the ghost snake told you to, I’m gonna…you’re back and you brought…research.” Sam triumphantly dropped a pile of files and weathered notebooks on the table and began sorting and skimming through them.
“I was looking through some of the Men of Letters files a while back and I remember these notes about one of them, a Winthrop Blake.”
“Typically douchey name,” Dean interjected.
“Uh huh, Slytherin for sure, right?” Sam snickered innocently as he picked up another notebook. After grinning up at Dean’s murderous expression he went on, “Blake apparently was a bit of an outcast among the other Men of Letters because he thought they should work more directly with hunters, like…here,” he said pointing to a page of neat handwriting. “‘Blake’s mad to bring hunters to this bastion of knowledge, and madder still to think that they would be willing subjects to his theoretical magicks. We are agreed, he must be stopped.’”
“Sam, you know I love the history lessons, but how ‘bout we cut to the part where we have a GHOST SNAKE IN THE BUNKER?”
“I’m getting there, Dean, so when I read that I looked for more on Blake’s experiments with hunters, I thought maybe he found something useful. I dug around the records and I found some of his notes and spells,” Sam explained, waving another notebook that looked like gibberish to Dean. “Blake was trying to enhance hunters’ abilities by melding them with the spirits of animals that were also great predators, like a grizzly bear, a komodo dragon, but his best results came with-”
“Oh, I’ll take ‘Rattlesnake’ for one hundred.”
“Yes! He called it pecu’una, but it’s not a ghost, it’s not even a particular snake. It’s like the essence of a snake that he created to enhance a hunter.”
“And so Blake dials up this pecorino and it moves in permanently? That couldn’t have been the plan.”
“Pecu’una. And no, something obviously went wrong, but Blake left no notes after his last entry where he says he’s going to summon it. Either the spell went wrong or the Men of Letters made good on their threats.”
“What does your new friend Pecker say?”
“We are not calling it that,” Sam said flatly. “And it doesn’t talk, remember? What it showed me honestly isn’t super clear, I mean the pecu’una didn’t even exist before Blake did his spell so its earliest memories are chaotic. It doesn’t seem to know what happened to Blake or the hunter. But then I think the Men of Letters tried a spell to get rid of it. When it didn’t work, but it hid itself from them so they would think it did.”
“Like it hid from us until now.”
“Right.”
“So, it just stuck around watching them? For how long?”
“I’m not sure. And then, well, Abaddon happened and it was just…stuck here.”
“It never tried to leave the bunker?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Okay. Joy. Now how do we unstick it? And more importantly, what’s it doing to you?”
“I’m fine,” Sam protested quickly, not meeting his brother’s eyes. When he finally looked up and saw Dean’s sceptical look he sighed, rubbing his hands over his face. “Okay. I’m not fine, but it’s not because of anything it did and this isn’t making anything worse. I promise.” This time he met his brother’s eyes with as much sincerity as he could manage and it was Dean that finally sighed, his signalled acceptance still tinged with doubt. Accepting that was as good as he could expect, Sam continued on, “From what I could tell from Blake’s notes, the melding wasn’t meant to be permanent. It was just meant to assist a hunter through one hunt, and then it would basically dissipate. You’d have to perform the ritual again to duplicate the effect.”
“Somehow I don’t think he got the recipe right.”
“The hunters were only supposed to have enhanced senses, abilities. And the pecu’una wasn’t supposed to exist after that as a separate entity. But now it does. It’s showing me what it’s seen, Dean, and I can sense its emotions. It was just…a surprise, overwhelming at first. But it’s okay now.” Sam kept to himself his thoughts about what might have made it possible for the spirit to share its knowledge with him this way. Both possibilities – a side-effect from the Trials or his own past psychic abilities which might just be dormant – were touchy subjects with Dean and there were more than enough of those between them these days.
“Can you complete the ritual from Blake’s notes?” Dean asked somewhat reluctantly. He really had no desire to be magically joined to a snake, but he had less desire to have that happen to his brother.
“I wouldn’t want to try, given that we already know it didn’t work right. But I think there’s maybe another way,” Sam began, and then proceeded to lay out his plan as quickly as possible, not wanting to allow Dean a chance to object before he had made his case. When he was finished a long pause followed before Dean finally spoke.
“So you don’t think it’s trapped in the bunker?” Dean asked slowly. Sam shrugged.
“If I’m right, we’ll find out.”
“And it’s...okay with this? I mean, if you’re right, it means it will...” Dean trailed off, drawing his forefinger across his throat with a hiss.
“Yeah, but it never wanted this. It’s been alone here, all this time until we came. It’s what I feel most from it, it just…wants to fulfil its purpose.”
“Okay, fine I’ll make you a deal, Mr. Maracas. Sleep and Tylenol for Sam – seriously, dude, you look like crap – and a couple of good meals which Sam will eat, then I’ll look for a hunt. Then provided Baby’s good with the ride-along, you come with and get your snake on, and if Sam’s right that will do the trick.” He looked at Sam expectantly until his brother nodded.
“I’m pretty sure it will.” Sam looked bothered for the first time, which given everything that had been happening up to and including ‘communing’ with their new snake friend made Dean worry.
“Sammy?”
Sam shook his head sourly before responding.
“It agrees and it’s grateful. And I think it likes you.”
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The next few days were surprisingly normal, at least by Winchester standards. Sam rolled his eyes often but accepted the extra mother-henning from his brother with reasonably good graces. While he still looked pale, he was more animated than Dean had seen him since the Trials had begun. Dean suspected that he had their guest to thank for that, as he watched Sam engaging readily in one sided conversations while leafing through Men of Letters files and journals. There had apparently been some amount of time between whatever had happened to Winthrop Blake and the appearance of Abaddon, and Sam was soaking up the images provided by the spirit to fill in the gaps of what had been documented. What good any of it would do was a mystery to Dean, but it made his brother happy and that was certainly enough.
For his own part, Dean had found the spirit unexpected playful, trying to catch him off-guard by rattling at unexpected times. After startling once (maybe twice, not that he’d ever admit it) Dean had caught on to the game, and had found he’d enjoyed the cat and mouse nature of the game, even turning the tables on the spirit once or twice by pre-emptively calling out its presence. He thought they’d come to a kind of mutual respect, hunter to hunter.
Sam kept his mouth shut when a week had passed before Dean even cracked open the laptop. He kept his own council when he noticed that Dean was no longer using a series of nicknames but had settled on Peck, which the spirit found pleasing. Sam remained silent as Dean passed over a couple of clear potential hunts. Sam said nothing when Dean’s taunts that he ‘won again’ echoed through the bunker.
Sam wistfully thought of various birds and hamsters he’d been forced to abandon or leave behind growing up because hunting left no room for pets (how he’d cried over Bones) and how Dean had seemed to stoically accept that reality while Sam had cried and fumed at the unfairness of it all. It had never occurred to his younger self that Dean might have accepted it but it didn’t mean that he’d wanted it.
Another week passed with Sam learning more about the Men of Letters from Peck’s viewpoint, with Dean playful and relaxed as he hadn’t really been since getting back from Purgatory. One evening Sam casually dropped the suggestion that maybe Peck’s hunt could wait until after he’d finished the Trials. By the thin press of Dean’s lips and the restlessness he felt from the spirit it had been the wrong thing to say. The next morning Dean had located the perfect hunt and shown it to Sam. Sam looked away from his brother’s carefully blank expression, wishing more than anything he had just kept silent for a while longer.
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The vamp nest was in a boarded-up diner off Route 66 in New Mexico, a weathered wooden structure which looked like a good gust of wind might make it collapse. They pulled into the parking lot as the sun was beginning to set over the desert. For a while they just sat watching the sky turn an otherworldly combination of reds and purples and Sam pretended that devastating beauty was the reason for the lump in his throat. Dean had insisted that taking out this nest at dusk would make it a better hunt, more challenging for them, refusing to admit that he knew rattlers preferred to hunt at night. For Sam evidence that Dean also cared about Peck made this better and worse. Worse, because it would be one more loss that among their many. But better, because even though he suspected they would never speak of it, Peck would be another thing that they and they alone shared, something no one else would have even understood. Another bit of family history that Sam could cling to for strength as the Trials seemed to want to drain him of it.
“Okay, we all ready for this?” Dean looked at his brother before gazing up at the roof the way he had gotten in the habit of when talking to their guest. “Peck, you good?” An enthusiastic rattle echoed through the Impala. “Okay, well, I guess this is it then. You know the rules, Peck. Go for the ankles, it’ll make it easier for us to take the heads. And remember, watch out for Sammy.”
“Hey!” Sam protest was drowned out by another loud rattle.
“That sound like a yes to you?”
“It sounded like you’re a jerk,” Sam grumbled. Dean gave him a look of feigned innocence and they sat in the car a moment longer, watching the sky continue to fade as the sun dropped behind the desert landscape. Sounds of shouts and screams erupted from the diner and the brothers couldn’t help but smile for a moment before exiting the car together and moving to the trunk. As they pulled out their machetes, Dean gave his brother a long look. It might be his own desperate need to have it be true but he thought Sam looked better, stronger than he had a few weeks ago. Maybe strong enough now to make it out of the Trials okay. He’d prayed for Cas and he’d gotten Peck, but Dean wasn’t one to argue with results.
“Peck sounds like he’s having fun, time for us to join the party,” he offered. Sam nodded quietly and Dean couldn’t help but add, “You good, Sam?”
“Yeah,” Sam said firmly, slamming the trunk of the Impala shut with a determined look. “We’ve got work to do.”
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THE END